Norwegian (norsk) is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language. Norwegian is closely related to and generally mutually intelligible with Swedish and Danish. Together with these, as well as Faroese, Icelandic and a number of extinct languages, Norwegian belongs to the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages). Due to isolation, Faroese and Icelandic are no longer mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form, because mainland Scandinavian has diverged from them.

Spoken Norwegian forms a continuum of local and regional variants that are all mutually intelligible. There is no officially sanctioned standard of spoken Norwegian, but there is a de facto spoken standard of Bokmål known as Standard ?stnorsk (Standard East Norwegian), spoken mainly by the urban upper and middle class in East Norway. Standard ?stnorsk is the form generally taught to foreign students.

As established by law and governmental policy, there are two official forms of written Norwegian - Bokmål (literally "book language") and Nynorsk (literally "new Norwegian"). The Norwegian Language Council recommends the terms "Norwegian Bokmål" and "Norwegian Nynorsk" in English.

Norwegian is a North Germanic language with around 5 million speakers in mainly in Norway. There are also some speakers of Norwegian in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the UK, Spain, Canada and the USA. Early Norwegian literature, mainly poetry and historical prose, was written in West Norse and flourished between the 9th and the 14th centuries. After that Norway came under Swedish and then Danish rule. Norwegian continued to be spoken but Danish was used for officials purposes, as a literary language and in higher education.

After Norway separated from Denmark in 1814, Danish continued to be used in schools until the 1830s, when a movement to create a new national language emerged. The reasoning behind the movement was that written Danish differed to such an extent from spoken Norwegian that it was difficult to learn, and because they believed that every country should have its own language.

There was considerable debate about how to go about creating a national language and two languages emerged - Landsmål (national language), based on colloquial Norwegian and regional dialects, particularly the dialects of western Norway, and Riksmål (national language), which was primarily a written language and very similar to Danish.

Landsmål was renamed Nynorsk (New Norwegian) in 1929 and Riksmål is now officially known as Bokmål (book language). A few people over 60 still use Riksmål, which is considered a conservative form of Bokmål and differs only slightly from it.